“This social thriller, dealing with corruption in the New York docks, is a summation of the aesthetics of 1930s radical theater: acting (Stanislavsky plus Freud equals the Method); mise-en-scène (‘poetic' naturalism); dialogue (heightened everyday speech). It has been argued that these aesthetics have been fundamentally undermined by the political collapse of the people who made the film....” --National Film Theatre, London.
On the Waterfront remains controversial for its implication that the dockers' union was run by gangsters (coming at a time when the union was hounded by McCarthyism), and for its defense of informing (coming from Kazan, who was a friendly witness at the HUAC hearings).